This invention relates to a portable assembly for testing for environmental contamination in ground water. Since the beginning of recorded time, wherever man has made his dwelling there has been waste produced. In the past and even in the present, man has isolated and removed the waste from inhabited areas for the comfort of the dwellers. To accomplish the isolation and removal of the waste it has been standard practice to dump waste into the earth's waterways and large bodies of water or to make large piles of refuse away from populated areas. To meet the demand for electrical energy and defense, man has turned to nuclear energy, which has resulted in another type of waste that even today is stockpiled often in leaking containers. In addition to creating great amounts of waste, civilization has been forced into applying chemicals to the earth in order to make the land yield larger crops.
Since soil is made up of pulverized rock, the surface of the earth is permeable and water is allowed to filter down and create large underground rivers called aquifers. These aquifers are the source of much of the fresh water that man uses to survive. Not only are the aquifers a direct source of water for man, but they also feed many of the surface bodies of water that are used as water supplies, therefore the aquifers are also an indirect supplier of fresh water.
Because of electrostatic attractions between water molecules and other molecules which can be chemical, organic and or nuclear, waste molecules are transported to aquifers that are directly and indirectly fresh water supplies for man. This results in many of the fresh water supplies now containing contaminants that are hazardous to mankind.
Because of the hazards, tests have been developed to determine if a well that has tapped into an aquifer is supplying contaminated water. There are also projects that comprise one or a number of monitoring wells, which are wells that are drilled for test purposes only. Such wells allow scientists to determine if an aquifer is contaminated and to keep a history of the well. Some of the tests in use today are able to detect contaminates in the quantities of one part per billion.
Even though scientists have highly sophisticated test procedures and equipment available to them, the methods of getting the test equipment into the wells and to the water have been relatively archaic. Prior to the present invention, two of the primary methods for getting test equipment to different well depths has been by use of human muscle or the use of portable cranes. The two methods mentioned either limited the depth that could be penetrated or inflated the cost of the tests due to the manpower required. Neither one of the methods mentioned provided any protection for umbilical cords between submerged test sensors and surface operations.